London has long had to fight off threats to its status as a global financial hub from the likes of Singapore, Geneva and Hong Kong. But cost-cutting plans being considered by Deutsche Bank have revealed an unlikely new threat – Birmingham.

The German bank is looking to hire sales traders to work in its existing office in the city, which is currently dominated by back-office, operations, and private wealth staff, according to a number of people familiar with the plans.

It is understood the new staff will be acting for smaller accounts that can no longer be serviced out of London cost efficiently.

There will be no redundancies in London, and the new team in Birmingham will have fewer than 50 new sales traders, according to a person close to the bank.

The bank is planning a similar move in the US. Deutsche Bank’s main US headquarters are on Wall Street in New York. But it is planning to make greater use of its office in Jacksonville Florida, which currently houses around 1,000 staff. Deutsche Bank declined to comment.

There have been a number of departures from Deutsche Bank’s equities division in recent months, including Audrey Wiggin, the former head of specialist sales, and Antoine Bisson, a managing director and senior figure in the bank’s trading business.

Banks are desperate to manage costs and are employing a variety of tactics to do so. At its strategy day earlier this year, Deutsche Bank included both the European and Asia-Pacific equities businesses in the “turnaround” bucket in its strategic priorities.

Speaking at the time, Colin Fan, co-head of corporate banking and securities, said: “Equities is a structurally high cost-income business, though it is a low user of capital.

By reducing the cost-income ratio, while preserving critical mass, equities can be accretive to return on equity when markets normalise.”